Too Much For One Heart
by Darthishtar
Summary: In an AU vignette songfic, Padme reflects on her decision to raise her son and the dangers it presents. Written to Too Much for One Heart, a song cut from Miss Saigon.


Author's Note: The song "Too Much For One Heart" is a beautiful song sung by a mother to the man who might never know their son. It was originally written into "Miss Saigon," but removed from the libretto. If you would like to hear it, head here to find a video of it sung by the original Kim, Lea Salonga. I heard it one night and could not stop recognizing the way it related to Anakin and Padme. This is the result of those musings.

_Outside there is a war,  
in here the night is still._

Suicidal had been the first word that Obi-Wan had used to describe the plan. When he had regained some sense of his diplomatic skills, at least enough to speak civilly to her, he had downgraded the epithet to insane and then simply dangerous.

Since Obi-Wan had been mistaken about other things in the past, Padme had taken the words into her mind, but had stored them away where they could not be heard.

After all, she could not trust the judgment of the man who had not seen Anakin's turn coming. It was the same mistrust that she had ascribed to herself, since she had been acutely aware of her own limited understanding in the days following Mustafar. She had been a child known for her astuteness, a Queen acclaimed for her wisdom and a Senator known for her sense of justice. For all of her instincts and her supposed wisdom, she had possessed neither the foresight nor the wisdom to save either the Republic she had served or the man she had loved.

She did not deserve to be trusted, but there were only two sentients in this cruel universe who completely disagreed with that assessment. One of them was probably curled securely against the shoulder of her oldest friend in the Senate, Bail who had promised that he would love and protect Leia almost as much as Padme would have.

The other was her first-born miracle.

_the jasmine buds have bloomed,  
the way the jasmine will.  
And i have given birth to a speckle of dust,  
to a sparkle of light  
to a small hint of life.  
Frail as a flower in the morning  
is this tiny work of art_

Luke knew her in simple terms. A mere month old, he knew that she possessed the warm arms that rocked him to sleep and held him close. Hers was the breast that fed him. Her voice was the one that quietly sang Tatooin songs and Naboo lullabies.

Under those circumstances, there were no reasons that he should distrust her. He did not know any better and, in time, she would have to teach him differently.

For now, however, he was too fragile for the weight of such truths. He was strong enough to wield a rattle formidably and to clutch at her fingers with a startlingly firm grip. He was strong enough to show some primitive form of love and to forgive her when she tried to hold him too close. She could not guarantee that he would always remember those abilities, but she would do her best to school him in those matters every day that he was hers to hold.

_when i see his face before me  
this is too much for one heart_

She had doubted at first that she would remember her own strength. Anakin's betrayal had come very close to breaking her. The heart that she had used to fight too many wars and right not enough wrongs had come even closer to breaking. For Luke, for Leia, for the wars that she still had to fight, she had forced herself to live no matter how little remained of the life she had known.

The Jedi had insisted that they be separated and had claimed that there would be a time when they would give each other strength. When it had come to it, there had been no easy way to choose which child would remain with her. She could not raise Luke to use the gifts that his father had passed on to him. She could not teach Leia the wisdom to solve the Galaxy's ills. Both tasks required more than one parent and, moreover, required the things that defined why Padme Amidala had loved Anakin Skywalker in the first place.

In the end, because Bail had spoken often of his futile yearning for a daughter and because she trusted him in a way that she would never be able to trust herself again, she had asked him to be the man Leia would call Father. Obi-Wan had attempted to reason that Luke would be safe with Anakin's step-brother and his wife, but for all the strength of character that she had seen in Owen and Beru, she had not been able to do it. She had not trusted herself very much in the month since Mustafar, but she had forced herself to believe that, in her nearly-fractured state, she could still be a mother to Anakin's son.

_Here like a seedling in the garden  
is a world about to start  
how i need you here to share it  
this is too much for one heart_

Tatooine had remained as the only safe haven for them. Anakin had hated it since the moment his mother had been buried under the light of Tatoo I and II and surely, the man he had become would have held to the same ideals.

She had wanted to give her children everything, but the life she had created here demanded humility of circumstances. When she could have sheltered her son in the Lake Country on Naboo or given him a mansion on Chandrila or a thousand more years, she had chosen an adequate home beyond Anchorhead. When she could have bought him finely-woven clothes and a roomful of toys, she provided the same rough-spun tunics and pants that she had learned to love here. She had bought a few innocuous toys and carved others from snippets of japor.

The house—she could not call it a home, not here—had two bedrooms, only one of which was used. She could not bear to have Luke out of reach for too long and craved the weight of his body in her arms or against her concave belly, but that was not the primary reason for the house she had chosen. She had insisted on a cramped lodging simply because she could not bear to feel the emptiness of the space that Anakin would never again fill. 

_yours, half of all of this is yours  
and i swear it on the moon  
Soon you will see, the best of you and me  
in the smile that is shining   
on the face of your son  
all alone in my arms i hold such beauty  
I want time to stop right here_

For all the empty places left by Anakin, there were too many acute evidences of his evidence. There were the times that she reached for him in the night, when she remembered the imprint of his arms against her shoulders or the weight of him against her. She missed the heat of his lips desperately and found it difficult to breathe at times when his arms did not wrap around her ribcage.

The greatest difficulty, however, was the constant need to watch over Luke. When she turned towards him the night and caught the glimmer of moonlight on one perfectly round infant cheek, she could recognize the lines of Anakin's face or the way that cheek would shift in a broad, toothless smile that would make her ache with the memory of Anakin's mischievous grins. Luke had her lean, delicate frame and the shape of her hands, but everything else, from the downy blonde hair to the clear blue of his eyes, would always belong to Anakin. 

She hid here and knew it was ineffectual. For all the love and all the protection she could offer Luke, there would be a time in too few years that she would see little of herself in her son. Too soon, there would be no way that Anakin could look on the boy and not know that he was their son.

Perhaps she could stop it from happening. Perhaps she could go against every instinct and deny her son the freedom that she had struggled to preserve.

She could deny him everything if she forgot how to feel, but it might not make any difference. For everything she could give Luke and everything that she could take away, she could not guarantee that it would preserve him.

_make perfection last forever  
in which i could disappear, disappear._

Perhaps Obi-Wan had been right. Perhaps it would have been better for her to withdraw from her childrens' lives entirely. She loved them enough to give them life, but it might have been a greater love to give them the hopeless surname of 'orphan.'

If she left now after delivering him into Obi-Wan's arms or after pressing him into Beru's eager embrace, perhaps she could correct this. She could fade into oblivion…

Perhaps it would be for the best. Perhaps it would only make things worse. If Luke were bereft of his mother, he might go to his father and she would have made her most hated sacrifice in vain.

_Yours, half of all of this is yours  
and now i feel you coming near   
here, you will see the best of you and me  
for life stories combining  
in this life we've begun_

Obi-Wan had spoken of near-misses and the dangers of simply existing within the dangers of the New Order. There had been too many times when the darkness had seemed to wrap around imaginary ghosts. She had frightened herself with empty shadows and her own hollow breaths.

In the moments after the births, she had felt herself slipping away into the release of death and had fully expected her words to Obi-Wan to be her last. She could have given him instructions on how to provide for her children or she could have apologized for the supposed crime of loving a Tatooin Jedi. 

Instead, she had insisted that there was still good buried in the scorched and immolated body of the man who had turned his back on the light. Yet now, having been forsaken by the forces of death, she found herself fearing that she had been wrong about even that.

_I have been living with such wonder  
that my soul could burst apart,   
knowing soon we'll be together  
and it's too much for one heart._

She could leave Luke now. She had enough money and strength to put a galaxy between them. The distance and the absence of both her children might kill her. Vader, if he might forget Anakin, might complete the act of killing her.

She could let go of her perfect son with even more difficulty than the way she had released her daughter into another's arms. For the love of her child, she might find that she had the impossible strength for such an audacious act.

Then again, that might prove to be too much for one heart to achieve.


End file.
